“Biesse has changed, and their logo represents a deep change, the need to implement a real, strong process of integration involving all the organizations acquired over the past thirty years. Biesse has been expanding without a fixed plan, instead they have been governing different factors, successful companies that have maintained their goals. This is no longer possible. In a fast-changing world, you need the capacity to adapt to different situations faster, and you must identify possible synergies to achieve powerful organization improvements”.
This is Biesse’s new vision that Raphaël Prati, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, helped us understand. At the press conference during “Biesse Inside” held last October 21, we were curious about the unexpected new logo, which represents deeper changes in the strategies of one of the world’s leading wood and furniture technology providers. Hence the decision to travel to Pesaro and see what’s going on…
“After an intensive and really challenging process, we are finally ready to show the results of our research aimed at identifying the directions to improve our organization. A strategic hint came from Roberto Selci, our managing director, to create “one company” built on the same processes, guidelines and approaches. So, we have streamlined and optimized the resources of an industrial group that has expanded massively over the years, implementing our ability to respond to customer needs with more and more innovative technological solutions, and even faster.
This transition was launched in 2013, when we united all the group brands under the Biesse name, but in the past two years, we have really changed gear and shared many factors: from the development of technical solutions that can be applied in all our destination industries (wood, glass, plastics, stone and composites) to more effective operational marketing. We have optimized our assets, eliminating redundancies, creating new synergies for technical support, training and service, which have immediately increased the value we can offer to those who choose our technology.
Starting from the vision of our managing director, we outlined the mission of our company: new positioning, a much clearer brand architecture, one company based on shared processes and guidelines”.
A revolution…
“I would rather say evolution, the decision to be a single but articulated organism, capable of addressing all the sectors where we offer our expertise.
The new Biesse, so to say, consolidates our historical values into three pillars: first, we are multi-material, we want to continue to be “masters of materials”, able to deal with any material in any context.
The second pillar is being “native international”, we support our customers all over the world in the best and most effective way. Our founder, Giancarlo Selci, has always looked beyond the Italian borders, and today, more than 80 percent of Biesse revenues come from abroad. We have made another step forward, growing from a Pesaro-based company enjoying global success to a multicultural business, where strategic decisions are based on “meaningful contamination” from all countries where we operate. A strong line of development, a huge wealth that will open up major scenarios in the future…The third pillar is collaboration with our customers to process different materials and create items, objects, products that can improve the lives of the people who use them. This is not just a slogan, it’s a process that translates into our mission: streamlining the production processes of our customers so that they can make their products easily. This focus on the simplification of the production activity of our customers is the core of what we are going to do in the near future”.
What about the decision to get rid of a brand that was so popular around the world?
“We did a great job, leaving all doubts aside because it was the right thing to do, identifying new colors and a shape with a real scientific process, working on the message we wanted to convey, but also on perception, involving even neuroscience… We did not rely on our taste, on visual elements only, we worked to have a sign, with colors that represent our evolution, a symbol that illustrates our strong commitment in all the application areas of our technology, not only in the wood industry, and that can somehow raise questions when you see it…
Personally, I believe the new logo represents the essence of what we do, namely processing solid materials to generate shapes and functions that did not exist before. I will add that the new logo was appreciated also by Giancarlo Selci, who perfectly understood our goal and supported it, acknowledging that the time had come to go beyond a symbol that was associated to wood more than to what Biesse is today. All of this without forgetting or underestimating our origins, but with the confidence that we have designed an organization and industrial architecture that will enable us to add much more to what we are today, with a clear logic…”.
… starting from the “Inside” event
We really must say thank you to Ettore Vichi for his involvement in our interview, going beyond our curiosity for “Biesse Inside” 2022 to have a pleasant conversation spanning many topics, from his recently acquired position of Chief Officer for Europa, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Starting from the excellent preliminary results for 2022: “The turnover is expected to break all records, exceeding 800 million revenues (this part of the interview was made on November 17, editor’s note) and a book of orders currently 30 percent bigger than the same period of 2021, so that we can look ahead at the second half of 2023 and early 2024. After all, this is another result of the strategies of the “new Biesse” and our focus on consistent results: the mission is to achieve a consistent trend, with no peaks or ups-and-downs that are difficult to handle…
To achieve this, we have divided our global operations into three macro areas – Emea and Apac assigned to me, Americas relying on Federico Broccoli’s experience – and we have increased and strengthened our subsidiaries adopting a different approach from the past, a unified approach to promote all technologies under one brand, with procedures and behaviors that will leverage all possible synergies between our divisions, from wood to glass, from stone to plastics. A great cultural change”.
Ettore Vichi
Are your subsidiaries ready to handle such big changes?
“As I said, we have launched a modern reorganization process to be able to face the transformation of each market with a more specific, faster and more consistent action. I must say that, all over the world, Biesse has invested in young people, ready to accept this challenge. I will not hide that someone decided not to take part in this new journey, but we think this is an inevitable consequence.
Instead, I want to stress the fact that our owners are supporting diversity and the essential contribution that people from different countries can give to the implementation of new strategies: we are no longer a company that “sends” people abroad, instead we interact, we adopt exchange policies to build the future Biesse”.
“We know that 2023 might turn out to be more complex than we expect now, for the reasons we all know, but we can rely on human resources that represent their country, know its habits, peculiarities and needs, so we will be able to seize every opportunity”, Ettore Vichi continued.
“In stormy weather, you have to adjust your sails accordingly. Our priorities are clear, we know our strengths, we know the needs of the users of our technology. As we work to achieve progressive, consistent growth, we don’t have to run after new records, but we’d rather consolidate our market footprint and business relations to get satisfaction”.
Mr. Vichi, let’s come back home for a while: what was “Biesse Inside” 2022 like?
“Hosting a group of selected customers to dedicate the necessary time to each of them is a valuable interaction method. We have developed from a “wood festival” to an “Inside Biesse” event with much more practical and focused meetings across a wide range of industries, showing to our visitors what we can do for them.
This approach elevates the quality of our business relations: we imagined this type of experience during the Covid emergency, and we immediately realized that this approach could offer a great quality at all times, also after the pandemic. With the enthusiastic support of our subsidiaries, we hosted many visitors in our headquarters, extending the initiative from the initial two-week schedule to almost two months of meetings and presentations”.
Mr. Vichi, may we ask one question: why did you decide to put an end to the Uniteam experience?
“We don’t want, we cannot be leaders in each and every segment, and although construction is a very interesting industry, we chose to invest our resources in other areas. There is still so much to do: our core business is numerical control working centers, although integration and automation are developing fast and, in our opinion, they will drive a momentous change in our industry.
We are moving faster and faster towards production systems where you just push a button and several machines interact to deliver the finished product; this is a real cultural change that will project machinery manufacturers into a totally new scenario, where they must take into account the different working methods between Europe and Asia, for instance”.
And what about the future?
“Innovation, first of all, as usual. At Biesse, there is and there will always be “real innovation”, besides the continuous improvements applied to every technology we offer. The password will be “simplification”, from every point of view, because the world is getting more and more complex, and the destiny or goal of mankind is winning the challenges”.
by Luca Rossetti
